Staff at the Bristow & Sutor Group, one of the UK’s leading players specialising in debt resolution, has exceeded its walking target by recording over 3000 miles during Debt Awareness Week 2022. The annual campaign organised by StepChange has been supported by staff from Bristow & Sutor for many years, raising funds and awareness every March.
The Bristow & Sutor Group comprises of Debt Recovery Plus (DRP) based in Manchester, Credit Style based in Sheffield and Bristow & Sutor based in Redditch. This year, they devised their most ambitious campaign yet, designed to encourage positive well-being and health benefits amongst staff, whilst simultaneously expanding the reach of awareness activities taking place. Each location had its own team, intending to walk a total of 500,000 steps, to simulate the 250-mile round trip it takes to visit all three main offices.
The more people who took part internally, the fewer steps required per person to reach the target number of steps, all tracked and accounted for using the Pacer Pedometer & Step Tracker app. The initiative was very well received and the end-goal target was collectively smashed, with 3,168,176 steps being recorded from the start to the end of Debt Awareness Week. Ultimately, the team from Redditch were crowned the winners of the event after walking the most steps in the shortest amount of time. Sammie Chalmers from Manchester was the top individual performer, walking over 176,000 steps, almost 176 miles.
The theme for Debt Awareness Week 2022 was Debt: Let’s Start the Conversation. By raising awareness of the week through this competition, it is hoped that understanding and engagement will be increased across all three locations and important conversations will now be encouraged and facilitated.
Internal awareness within a business is also an important aspect of DAW and thanks to this campaign, financial training workshops are now planned for Bristow & Sutor Group staff. These will aim to further improve holistic approaches to wellbeing and have been organised in conjunction with The Money Charity, the company’s main charity partner and experts in developing financial well-being for young people and adults alike.
Helen Addis, Group Social Responsibility & Customer Welfare Manager says, “We are very proud of the way our employees have embraced Debt Awareness Week and the friendly competition that has been shown in our walking challenge. This was a fun and healthy way to raise awareness but we never lose sight of the serious message behind this essential campaign.
“Helping over-indebted people to resolve their problems is our social responsibility. Research by Christians Against Poverty shows most people experiencing debt problems have put off seeking advice for up to two years, in many cases because they didn’t think things were bad enough that an intervention was needed. Joint involvement with debt advice professionals in campaigns like DAW can help dispel these misconceptions.
“When we talk about problem debt, we also don’t always take enough time to recognise the incredible work that industry personnel do daily. We want to ensure the help we offer to the people we engage with is also available to our employees. We are very excited to have invested in workshops delivered by the Money Charity and we have great initiatives lined up for the rest of the year, including volunteering week this June.”
The Bristow & Sutor Group has a long history of supporting campaigns and causes that make a positive impact. This includes supporting Talk Money Week, the annual financial wellbeing promotion held by MAPS (Money and Pensions Service) the Trussell Trust, Stop Domestic Abuse and AdviceUK. Employees are trained to the highest standard and use modern technology and data to achieve market-leading performance, whilst protecting the most vulnerable in society and the reputations of clients.